Free Legal Advice Near You. Find Answers And Ask Legal Questions From Your Own Community.marriott IT is hacking male students fro blackmail money. Please give me some legal direction.
asked 6 years ago

Author: Kamran Kasaian

To whom it may concern,

I really appreciate if someone could give me some legal direction on this crime. Money is not an issue, especially if someone can help me out. This is just my opinion but I really believe that this case is a lot bigger than Erin Andrews’s case mainly because there are a lot of victims that have been blackmailed for the sole purpose of extorting money and this is done by Marriott employees, using Marriott equipments while working/living on Marriott property. I have extremely strong evidence to prove all my claims including but not limited to a secretly recorded conversation from a key Marriott employee asking for money in exchange for the compromising information not to become public. The hackers have used the nickname Foxy Sparkle with previous victims. This is very similar case to Ronald Oates.

Basic background:

Location: This Marriott is located in one of Caribbean islands in West Indies. Marriott also owns a building (compound A) right next door where they house foreign workers who come here to train the locals. Compound A has a lot of empty rooms which they rent out to students who come to the island to study. All utilities including the TV and high speed internet is connected to Marriott hotel next door. When you turn on the TV in compound A, it says “welcome to Marriott”.

Victims: Young, MALE students. There are a couple of medical schools on this island and every four months about 1500 new students from U.S and Canada come here to start a new semester in the hopes of getting a residency spot back home.

How the crime is done: The Marriott IT employees monitor the internet usage of students and which adult websites they visit. When they have a lead, they first hack into the students email and if they found something, they go further by installing a malware into the victims computer to possibly extort more compromising content(i.e. pictures). The malware is installed through a fake update prompt for “YouTube Downloader” software.

What they do next: First they ask the victim himself to pay up or they will release the content. If he refuses, they will email the compromising content to his family and they threaten the family that they will continue with friends and relatives if they don’t get paid. At the same time, to increase the pressure, they email the relatives and they tell them that they own very compromising information about the victim. This makes the victims relatives to call and ask what is going on. The IT also email the victim’s parents couple of fake LinkedIn emails which contains the profile of the relatives that they intent to send the compromising content to.

They are extremely skilled at this. Even if they found the least amount of discriminating content, they will do their best to build on it by adding content from the previous victim, editing/using private pictures from others or even creating their own fake content in order to increase their leverage.

Effort to counter their attack: I have filed nine police reports with the local police station that is located across the Marriott; however I believe the officers are on this too because they write my report on a piece of scrap paper and they tell me to go home and not to talk to anyone. When I come back the next day, there is no evidence of me ever being in that police station. I actually started recording myself in order to prove that I have been filing reports regarding this crime. I also filed to police report in my state but I was told that the police have no jurisdiction over this crime.

I tried to contact couple of attorneys on the island; however even though there are many attorneys there, not many of them practice criminal litigation.

I even sent a letter along with some preliminary evidence to the hotel using a certified mail. Even though the front desk employee signed for the package(I have proof), it never got to the management because I got a threatening email from the hacker describing what was written in the letter and that there is going to be a major consequence if I try to contact them again.

Can you please help me with these questions?

#1)What is the jurisdiction to file a defamation lawsuit in this case? This crime is being done my Marriott employees in the Caribbean so the case is going to be against Marriot Int.; however, ALL the victims are spread across the U.S or Canada. There are other lawsuits against this Marriott(i.e. slip and fall) and they are being filed in U.S states. There are 3 IT employees that are behind this. Two of them are locals and one is a white guy that lives in one of the rooms in the hotel. The spouses of two of the IT work in compound A as a manager and maintenance coordinator.

#2)How can you ask the judge to make this case sealed? I think this is one of those rare cases and the victims have the absolute right to privacy.

#3)What type of attorney accepts cases like this? If know someone, can you please refer me to them?

I really appreciate anyone help. Filing a lawsuit is the only way to stop the harassment. I am working with a local news paper and they have already published an indirect article on their website about the extortion ring that exists on this island in order to inform other victims that they are not alone. Upper management has no idea that this is happening but for some reason a lot of locals know about this crime. I am open to anyone suggestion.